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I can't even read about Vietnam anymore. I was reading some articles written about military propaganda after My Lai and other Vietnam atrocities.

The Vietnam war political spin was the EXACT SAME BS that we have been hearing for the last 10 years about Iraq and other conquests. Even the "terrorists hid behind children, so we naturally had to shoot up the children" stuff.

It's sad that America is killing children because Americans aren't allowed to remember our recent history.

Actually, I think that's a good way to describe it. There's a lot of wisdom in the old fairy tales that told about people selling their souls to the devil to get rich. They're obviously (?) just fairy tales, but everybody could tell those stories and immediately think about the landholder sitting in his castle. It was a cultural language to describe what is valuable in life.

Now, we have sociopathy being promoted and glorified. Don't you want to be like a Hollywood star? (Who did what to get their roles?) Or a successful startup entrepreneur? (One in 1000 who succeeded, and only because they abandoned their families and sold user data to the government.)

I totally agree on the celebration of sociopathic behaviors. There seems to be a spotlight on self serving attention addicts.

There seems to be a prevalent message that to simply have wealth is a thing to strive towards. The way people get the wealth seems to be secondary to a lot of people. The fact that many people attain their "financial success" by fucking people over is not usually advertised ahead of the profit.

I served in Viet Nam in 1969 and 70. In 69 we lost 20,000 dead. I wasn't in the infantry (post engineer) but saw them come through the 18th Surgical Hospital (Mash type) On Camp Evens. I saw our dead lined up and laying in the sun. It's not hard to come to the 'kill anything that moves' frame of mind if YOU don't want to end up in one of the lines of dead. Kill is what you do to stay alive. If you don't want our young men to learn war, then take the matter up with the ones who draft them to fight the bankers wars. You might even do something radical like jail the bankers for massive securities fraud and a million pages of 'fraud on the court' instead of giving them taxpayers money.

If you ever have to fight a bankers war, I suggest you learn to kill anything that moves so YOU can live.

That's the thing about these wars. They're a terrible fuckup that hurts everybody involved. But people have "our boys are heroes" piped so loudly into their heads that it's hard to change that to "soldiers are victims." People think it's an insult to call soldiers victims.

And while Vietnam and Korea were drafts, the current wars are volunteers. People really should know better than to sign up for that. But yeah, in some places, military service looks like the only way out of an economic dead-end.

In the early days a lot of people were drafted. They joined the national guard to help in hurricanes and natural disasters, to help people, then Bush forced them to go fight his wars, to be a gangster for capitalism.

Boys packed onto airplanes and dropped in the jungle. How did they deserve that? Tell me all about how heroic you'd be if you were drafted tomorrow and thrown in front a guerilla army like the world had never known.

I'd likely break and die.

I'd be inclined to agree with you if we were instead talking about Blackwater.

I think, if I hadn't gone to Canada, if they forced me to Vietnam, that I wouldn't kill anyone who wasn't shooting at me right then and I'd make such a stink when others did that they'd end up fragging me. But so be it.

You're thinking in ideal terms. They had no idea who was shooting at them most of the time. After months of being harassed from the jungle dark, everyone looks like an enemy, I'd imagine.

I'm not saying it's fine that so many innocents were slaughtered. It is unequivocally not OK. However, I don't think you can spin someone around until they're dizzy and then blame them when they knock into someone else. Most of those kids didn't ask to be spun.

Excellent point. We didn't. The blame was limited to the leadership, in part because of the understanding that many Nazis were coerced.

You overestimate the ability of the mind to retain its independence in the face of overwhelming stress. The moral center of the cognitive process is capable of literally shutting down, and you end up with a perfect little soldier.

The French town of Beziers remembers the 800th anniversary of the first sack and massacre of the Albigensian Crusade.

When they discovered, from the admissions of some of them, that there were Catholics mingled with the heretics they said to the abbot “Sir, what shall we do, for we cannot distinguish between the faithful and the heretics.” The abbot, like the others, was afraid that many, in fear of death, would pretend to be Catholics, and after their departure, would return to their heresy, and is said to have replied “Kill them all for the Lord knoweth them that are His”.

You don't have to support our troops Allie; but I don't see how you could be any more disingenuous. Blame the operator, not the tool; and aren't we all their tools while we are hypnotized by them. All Nuremberg meant was that total war is only okay when our side does it; I'll bet you put that bloody gasoline in your car, and safely pay your income tax without a care; just the same as the rest of us.

Just saying this particular blame game isn't that productive at a tactical level; maybe it's best to save it for strategic interests? Hard rain's going to fall on us pretty soon Allie; maybe the drops will miss you for all your good intentions. I hope they do.

Yes. That worries me a lot. We're the world's new Nazis but we've seem to have forgotten what happened to the old Nazis. The plutocracy has used our military for their imperil troops, made them the new gangsters for capitalism (in Smedley Butler's phrase). And now all the world hates us. They have made us a target.

First off, a cowardly little prick like you doesn't have the right to talk about our troops.
Secondly, think about what these men had to go through. They lost close friends. They lost arms and legs. Some lost there lives. And nearly all have to live with killing another human. Those are some pretty heavy burdens, so why don't you think about that before you group every last soldier in with the men who completely lost there humanity during the war (some temporarily, others never really had it).
Those men also had the courage to serve when they were drafted, which pits them ahead of you in my book.

Yes I do have the right. If someone loses a friend does that give them the right to kill innocent men, women, children and animals, to burn down houses? No. But you don't seemed to have read the article which tells how this was due to orders that came down from the very top levels of the military.

I never said that loosing a friend would give someone that right, I was simply stating after all they've been through they don't need all the hate they've recieved through the years. They didn't need it then and they don't need it now.

Ah but this time is different with all those clean, cyberperfect surgical strike flying robots any kid can fly from a Nevada bunker with his own xbox controller! And when those snazzy robot mules and dogs are sent there, for sure they won't be used by ground troops to perpetrate war crimes on civilans!

Single asset culture is their greatest asset; used to be a house and job, now it's just a job. And what are people doing already just to hang onto that last, desperate thread? Not just cops and military either; more-and-more people are offing themselves because they got fired, and surely many more are more willing than it might seem to off someone else first.

Total war; both sides were doing it. Thank you Winston Churchill, and all your illuminati friends for getting that rolling; they just had to wait until the 30 year war was forgotten for that shit to be okay again.